Well, it’s that time of the week again where Tottenham Hotspur fans turn their attentions back to our stuttering Premier League campaign.
With a flying start under new head coach Nuno Espirito Santo, performances were still a worry and we are now on a run of three straight (heavy) losses. Welcoming improved Aston Villa to White Hart Lane for Sunday’s afternoon action is not going to be an easy task with the Midlands side having secured back to back victories over Everton and Manchester United.
However, with a much improved showing in the midweek Europa Conference League clash with NS Mura, we should come into the tie with renewed confidence – particularly so for Harry Kane following his hattrick on Thursday evening.
In advance of proper team news, we should be largely as we were, as it’s not expected that Steven Bergwijn will return for this one, but Ben Davies is also likely out having missed the midweek game with suspected appendicitis.
We have the quality for all three points here, we just have to hope we turn up.
Eriksen scored 51 goals for Spurs with 62 assists.
I am well aware of the stats.
I also know that in 1 season in Spain before joining Spurs, Lo Celso scored 16 in 45 games, playing in 3 different positions. It’s in there somewhere.
I was gutted to see CE leave, and I mostly blame Levy for not paying him what he was worth before his head was turned.
Now that he’s gone though, I look at the options we have at our disposal today and GLC might not be the worst one.
Regards CE, I loved him, but he was never the Mid’ General, he was also a crap tackler, but what a passer of the ball and when he wanted to what a free kick taker.
ww…you are correct but without checking, how many games do those stats relate to.
As others I agree, LoCelso could do CE’s job if played in the correct position for a period of time, thus confidence giving, that for me would be on the Left of a 4231 formation, Son on the Right. COYS
Count me as less of a fan of Ericksen than most on here. I thought he played crap much of the time. And his final months with Spurs, he was a disgrace.
Pompey Yid,
my family moved me out of London to Boston in the U.S,A. No one in Boston in that era had any idea of what football was (soccer was a girls game if you were in a rich private school, which I was not), so I started to play American football. Linebacker. lol. which meant my responsibility was to hit other people as hard as I could. I put three other players in the hospital, ended up on crutches myself, and never wanted to play again. I didn’t like the violent aggression that rewarded injuring other players.
Don’t put the time into figuring out what’s going on, PY. There are better things to learn.
American professional football players tend to have brain damage. The NFL had to set up a mutli billion dollar fund to pay debilitated retired players, and the billions are grossly insufficient.
But Spurs can make a hell of a lot of money renting space to the NFL twice a year. THfC makes all the money from all the food and beers sold. It should be enough to buy some decent talent for our FOOTBALL team.
Don’t let your grandchildren play American football. It’s not good to try to hit people so hard they won’t be the same afterwards.
White owners and managers, damaged players with african skin tones. Slavery never ended.
TK….thanks very much for your reply regards NFL, must admit even though I know absolutely nout about the so called game, rules wise, don’t wish to learn either, but also as you say I would never encourage anybody let alone my grandkids to play the game.
Other than my love of some 60+ years for Spurs I have always been a big fan of Rugby Union, even played it for many years as a forward, my two teams are Wasps n Harlequins, so when they play each other am on the fence lol!
Thanks again mate. COYS
Agreed TQ, Modric was a wonderful midfielder with superb control and great passing schools. I love the way he is always searching for the ball and making himself available.
I just wish we had young players coming through the academy with his talent.
I do not think we will return to a top 4 place until we solve this massive gap in our play. We have world class strikers but they need those through balls and crosses to add to their individual efforts.
How is Ericksen these days–after the shocking heart problem on the pitch while playing for his country? I haven’t heard about how he’s been doing since.
He seems to be ok TK, he had one of those thingy’s like a mini defribulator fitted so his heart can be restarted if it happens again. He is still contracted to Inter but I understand he hasn’t yet resumed playing. Whether he will be able to so in the future I don’t know.
In my opinion Eriksen rarely ran midfield …. Dembele did that for hin. And there is such a class gap between Eriksen and Modric that comparisons are futile.
Geof….am in the same camp of agreement with you there, now there was a player Dembele.
And also agree, yes the comparisons between CE and Mods is as you say futile, again so different in their play. COYS
Modric is a class act but he also played deeper than Eriksen and comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges.
Modric was never the goal threat CE was. Eriksen’s role was never “running the show”, he was the “lock picker” and I would have loved to see both play for Spurs together.
I valued Eriksen’s vision, touch, passing range and running. He had heart (no unsavoury play on words intended). He also scored important goals, breaking the deadlock against smaller teams we were struggling to break down.
Ultimately, I feel CE wanted more recognition from the club, and Levy played hardball with him and his wages. From that point on, things were broken and CE’s head was gone. When Levy was finally ready to do something about it, the situation was beyond repair. Shame.
If we had managed to keep our star players happy and been willing to pay them competitive wages, what a team we could have had, circa 2017. Lloris, Toby, Jan, Walker, Modric, Dembele, Bale, Eriksen, Son, Kane. That team + a half decent left back would have been amazing and would probably have won things.
BelgianSpur – As always pay out more, just assume we have the money to do it. Your strategy would make a lot more sense if we were owned by an oil state and could just spend more than we earned.
jod – as always, you disregard the facts. According to Deloitte’s last annual review of football clubs, we had the lowest “wages to revenue” ration in the PL at 39%. League average was 55% and the top spenders were past 70%.
We could increase the spending by 15% and still be considered prudent. If you think we have no money to spend, you are sorely mistaken.
The Dembele/Eriksen combo worked perfectly.
N’Dombele is the Dembele but we are desperately short of an Eriksen to complement him.
Someone who can pass, take set pieces and score goals. At the moment, we are relying too heavily on Son and Kane to work in isolation and make their own luck and chances.
BelgianSpur – one day Jod will come and join us in the real world, until then his overwhelming desire to put others down will always hold sway.
We have always had the lowest wage to turnover revenue in the premier league. The profits we generated as a result of this went towards the massive overspend on the new stadium, despite Levy saying that new stadium build would not impact our ability in the transfer market.
For the sake of balance however, it should be pointed out that since the summer window of 2019 our net spend has been considerable – larger than both Chelsea and Liverpool for example. We have just spent it really badly. COYS
DH – we mostly agree on this. A couple of observations however:
While I can take the point that we have spent more since the summer of 2019, this can also be explained by the fact that Liverpool, Chelsea and other clubs had far more settled squads which required a lot less investment from the get go. We were playing catch-up, paying for our severe lack of investment in years past.
It is also fair to point out that our spending increased following the riches of the new Sky deal kicking in. Yes, our spending increased, but so did everybody else’s. We may have spent more in absolute terms, but relative to league average, was it really that big of an effort?
A bigger sample size of 10 years (https://www.transfermarkt.com/premier-league/fuenfjahresvergleich/wettbewerb/GB1) will show that our net transfer spend ranks significantly behind all other top 6 clubs, but also behind the likes of Aston Villa, Everton or West Ham (all clubs supposedly far poorer than THFC), and on par with the likes of Wolves, Leicester, Newcastle, Brighton and other clubs that have spent parts of those 10 years in the lower leagues.
A look at the 5 year net spend would tell a similar story.
Even if we look at transfer windows individually, the the only time we really went for it in net spend was in 19/20, when we signed the likes of NDombele. But this was directly after 18/19, a season in which we made the history books for being the first team in PL history not to spend a single pound in a season. If you average the net spend over just those 2 years, it already brings it back down to normal levels.
We’re supposedly the 8th richest club in the world, but we certainly aren’t acting like it.
We have had far too many players who became demoralized and desperately wanted out. Modric basically went on strike to force his way our. So, to a lesser extent, has Kane. Berbatov, too. i’ll stop this list here. we all know the list could go on and on and on. All teams have this to some extent, but it’s a far worse a problem at THFC. Why?
DL.
The man has to nickle-and-dime everyone, to use an American expression. Danny boy would rather save a farthing than to resolve a problem. He forgets that saving a farthing at the cost of a billion shillings isn’t a good deal. A happy team might win much more–money and glory–than a team filled with frustration on the pitch and in the dressing room.
Too many players desperate to force their ways out, Far too many. What’s in common? DL’s inability to treat people as humans rather than as entries into a ledger book.
i’m not complaining that DL is parsimonious with the check book. it’s far better not to spend one’s self into oblivion. But one needs to understand that players are not pieces of equipment.
Does DL have a young grandaughter? If so I’m sure he bought her a cheap imitation of the doll she really wanted for her birthday. She got a birthday cake without the topping she wanted.
the problem is that once you’ve lost someone’s emotional involvement, it’s stupid to think you can get them to produce as well as they would if they were motivated by something that has human values. Most of our tragic losses of our best players were not because they wanted to squeeze out a few more bob. They simply lost the desire to be at a club where the managing director sees everything as though he had cloven hooves where his hands should be–unable to reach into his pockets to pull out a few pence.
It’s not that he wouldn’t pay these individual players a few extra bob. It’s that these players knew he’d never pay anyone a few extra bob, so our team will always be bleeding its talent. That’s why Kane is so bloody miserable. I don’t think he’s worried about his pay, but he’s worried that no one would want to play where getting paid is like going to the dentist for root canal.
In the mean time, it’s tragic and deeply saddening to see someone like HK play like the walking dead on the pitch. I want the Harry Kanes of our world to rise above their frustration and play the way they can, Better for them to sit than to play like zombies.
Painful to watch, but I’m sure we’ll see more of it with other players in the future so long as we have a man with cows hooves where his fingers should be, Get some fingers, Danny, so you can reach into your pockets and pull out a few bob.
DL will always give us a team that can flirt with glory. We’ll never fall into the depths of financial crisis. I guess this is something about which to give thanks. But we’ll always have the sadness of frustration lingering in the tea room and the dressing room.
I agree with this fully. It’s not about the money, it’s about the recognition. Sometimes, giving someone a marginal raise is more about the message it sends than the money itself. Eriksen was a prime example of this and we could have kept him interested.
I would argue that the acquisition of both LoCeslo and N’Dombele actually was, an attempt to replace Ericsson and Dembele, however so far it hasn’t quite worked.
Re wages, I feel we do pay quite a bit more than mainland Europe, I would point to Barcelona and I think Juve among others who have overstretched themselves finincially, by over spending on wages and transfer fees.
Hopefully our much lauded stadium will start to pay the Supposed benefits that were projected.
I just hope that after this COVID perhaps the football world will realign and start to get sensible prices and wages for players, after all, as I said earlier, there ain’t no young Peles, Maldini’s, Baresi’s, Maradonnas, or Cruyff ‘S, out there, all the brilliant players seem to be older.